New PC Questions

I'm looking into getting a new PC soon and thought I would look into what there is ahead of time to get an idea of what I want. I'm not a hardcore gamer or anything but may play the occasional game or two now and then. I mostly use it for browsing the net, video playback etc.

I have found the following so far and was hoping to get some feedback on if it is suitable or overkill for what I will use it for:

I want a dual core processor and I'm looking at the E8400 right now. I found that ASUS has a good rep for mobo's and possibly looking at the P45 chipset? I am also looking at the G45 although do you think this would not be wise as the gfx are integrated?

I read up on crossfire and don't think I will be needing this...

I also read that DDR3 has little difference in performance and is buggy with anything other than a quad core. Is this correct and should I go for DDR2?

for now i don't have a budget. I think an external graphics card would be better. I don't think a gaming build is a good idea. I would call myself a 'light' gamer. The only recent game I would play is perhaps GTA4.

Yes Transform, the E8400 is a fantastic processor and the ASUS P5Q series boards are good. How much do they come for (roughly translated to US$)?

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Thats good to hear that they go well together. From what I've seen, the P45 chipset is one down from the X series which is for gamers. I was looking on the ASUS website and found that there are quite a few different boards. However I will only need 1 ethernet port, 1 graphics slot which narrows it down a bit. There are so many different types its hard to choose. I know the P5Q matches my needs and seems to be the basic option of the P5Q series. But is there any others I should be looking at from that series?

IMO, it isn't worth spending that much on an Intel system now, since the X2 550 performs identically to the E8400 (they have identical specs too; 3GHz stock frequency, 45nm process, 6MB L2 cache on the E8400 & the same amount of L3 cache memory on the X2 550) and has an unlocked multiplier to boot. Also, the Corsair RAM I posted has a higher frequency than the Crucial kit.

i would go with rages build over the intel build because the 775 socket intel chips are on there way out and AMD has made almost all of there ships compatible with almost all the boards as in its more upgradeable in the future where as the intel system is not. Also go with the X3 720 to get the 3 core system and grab a little better video card as in maybe the ATi 4870 would make for a pretty nice system IMO.